She squeezed both hands around her coffee mug, maybe for the warmth. Two-handed, she brought the cup to her mouth, took a sip, and went on. “Darlene told her I’d gone off to make a fortune, and would come back for them. I might have said that; I would have said anything to get out of Hadlow. Alta said they waited years for me to bring them to a better life. I tried to tell Alta I’d spent most of my years moving from one town to another, waitressing, clerking retail, working always for small wages, barely getting by. She wouldn’t hear it. She kept chattering, spit flying out of her mouth, saying over and over it was my fault, them living hellish all those years.”
“Then Georgie called them?”
“That rat bastard,” she said, looking down at her coffee.
“He was doing well, in your employ.”
“Damned right. Several years earlier, he’d seen a picture of me in the Tribune. It was right after Silas had died. He came to the penthouse. He said he was down on his luck.”
“That was all? He didn’t threaten you with blackmail?”
Her eyes got a little wider, but she kept her face under control.
“About what?” she asked, watching my face to see what I knew.
“About anything,” I said.
She let it die. “I rented him an office on Wacker Drive, and gave him a retainer to watch over a few checking accounts. For a long time, it was good enough for him.”
“Until suddenly he got greedy?”
“Not so suddenly. I think he’d been waiting since day one for the right opportunity to shake out some big money. He saw his chance with poor Andrew. Georgie came to me, told me he’d discovered Andrew had embezzled a half-million dollars from the Symposium. He said he’d negotiated with Andrew; Andrew would leave, and pay back the money over time. All it took was my blessing. I didn’t think to question him, Mr. Elstrom. I was more shocked than anything.”
She looked at me with steady eyes. “But then I made things worse.”
“By not questioning?”
“By saying something stupid and rash. For some time, I’d been thinking about how burdensome my philanthropic life had become. There were so many requests to investigate, and never being absolutely sure which were worthwhile. I whined at Georgie, saying Andrew was the last straw, that maybe I should give away most of what I had. I could make last, major donations to charities I was already familiar with, and be done with all those hours. At that point, I’d made no final decision, Mr. Elstrom; I was merely feeling sorry for myself, in the wake of what I thought I’d learned about Andrew.”
“It sent Koros into action?”
“Like a rocket. He’d already wet his snout with that half million. He wanted more, but he’d have to act quick, before I gave everything away.”
“He called Darlene,” I said.
“Alta said when he told them I’d hit it rich, it was like I’d cut out their hearts. They didn’t need any convincing to come down to Chicago to help. I’d have to pay for those years they lost.”
“Alta was telling you all this while she was holding a knife to you?”
“Calm as could be, looking up with her wet eyes and her dead-smelling breath.”
I looked at the man looking back at me from the grill window. “Where was Gus?”
“Back in the restaurant, unaware,” she said, too quickly.
“He didn’t come to the door, wondering why you’d gone outside?” I asked. Gus was too observant, too watchful.
She kept her face calm. “Not a chance,” she said.
She took another sip of coffee. Her hands were steady and sure now. “It was a sick idea Georgie had come up with. Apparently, he’d saved a copy of a little novel I wrote in high school, about a clown who died, falling off a roof. I’d given him that copy. It had my handwriting and fingerprints on it, perfect for their needs.”
“Sweetie Rose.”
She set down her coffee cup slowly. “How could you know that?” she whispered.
“I went to Hadlow.”
“Hadlow?” she managed, but we were no longer talking about a high school girl’s novel. She was pressing for what I knew of a gas station killing.
“No big deal,” I said. “Miss Mason loaned me the mimeographed copy you gave her. It’s since been burned.”
“Thank you,” she said. Then, “Alta had Georgie’s copy. It’s been destroyed, too.”
We were fencing, she and I. I’d been too long going in circles in Chicago and in Indiana; she’d been too long living cautiously, running from Hadlow.
“James Stitts?” I asked.
“I never did see Darlene, but I expect she dyed her hair to match mine, and Georgie put her in a limousine to be seen hiring Mr. Stitts at his house.” She paused, then, “As you reported to me, back in my other life.”
“Georgie followed him up on that roof and cut his rope?”
“He was on another roof, taking pictures. They were a little out of focus, but they were meant to leave no doubt who was up on that hardware building.”
“A woman who looked just like you, cutting the rope?”
She nodded. “As teenagers, me and Darlene looked like twins. Through a long camera lens, from some distance away, she could pass perfectly for me.”
“You saw these pictures?”
For a moment she studied the scratches on my face. Then she said, “Yes. Alta had them in her car, with the negatives, and with that mimeograph of the story I wrote in high school.”
“For her to blackmail you.”
“For Georgie and Darlene to blackmail me. Darlene told Alta she wanted every nickel I had, but she also wanted me left alive, ruined, so I’d have to live like they did.”
“What did Alta want?”
“She wanted me dead. She wanted everybody dead.” She shivered. “Alta was the smartest of us all, but my mother used to say Alta was prone to sudden attacks of understandable anger. My father had a sickness in his head. Or an anger. He sexually abused Alta from a very young age, though my mother tried hard to shield Darlene and myself from knowing that.”
“And you? Darlene?”
“He never touched us.”
“Alta wasn’t his child,” I said.
“She sure didn’t look like Darlene and me. Sheriff Roy would stop by, from time to time, always when my father was somewhere else. I could see Roy’s fondness for my mother. I don’t know anything more than that.”
“Who killed your father?”
“Why do you think he was killed?” she asked slowly.
“He was buried facedown in your town cemetery. He didn’t take off.”
She leaned across the table. “How can you know that?”
“Traces of your DNA were found on me and a Chicago policeman after we were attacked in your penthouse.” Again, without realizing, my fingers had reached up to touch my face. “By then, Darlene was dead. So was Alta, for years, or so everyone believed. That left you as the only person who could have left that DNA. Since I’ve never seen you as a killer, that DNA meant Alta was still alive. I drove up to Hadlow to take a peek under the ground. A man was in Alta’s grave, facedown.”
“He was working on a pump. Alta caved in his head with a shovel. We found her standing over him, calm as could be. There was a metal storage box in the barn, meant for long-handled tools. We put him in that, and dragged it to the edge of the woods. Mama and Darlene buried him, while I sat with Alta in the house. She had blood on her, but she didn’t seem to mind. Her mind had disengaged from what she’d done. Mama never let her go back to school, for fear of what she might say. She told Darlene and me to say our father had taken off.”
“Why put him in the box facedown?”
“We didn’t want to see his eyes. Who moved him from our place to the cemetery?”
“For that, we have to talk about the gas station,” I said.
She paused, and then nodded.
“Darlene, with Roy Lishkin’s unknowing help, moved him,” I said. “Your mother’s death, and then all of you being seen near that gas station, and then Georgie and you taking off must have set him to wondering. He probably started making unannounced trips to your farm. Darlene must have feared it would only be a matter of time before Alta would let something slip about your father, or the young man at the gas station. So Darlene came up with a way to shut down the gas station investigation, and at the same time, get rid of a potentially risky corpse buried out by the woods. She dug up your father, hosed off the box, told Lishkin that Alta had died and that she was to be buried on the cheap, in that tin box. I doubt Lishkin asked any questions. He must have wanted everything to be over, too. He pulled some strings, and the box was buried quickly, and quietly, at the edge of the cemetery.”